What is this?

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What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

I thought along the lines of being with a significant other and feeling trapped. As if they were holding you back with heavy hands. Brass is a strong dense alloy, and having brass rings on would only make the hands holding you back heavier. Chopping them off would make it somewhat easier to break free.

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Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace says of this final song on Transgender Dysphoria Blues:

It’s an angry song, and it’s about feeling like you have certain relationships in your life where you have to fake the person that you are and be inauthentic and compromise yourself to people you work with or people you see out at a bar who corner you — who make you the kind of person that you aren’t, really — and feeling like you’re so angry that you just want to be like blacked out from someone’s existence, like, “Fucking forget about me, don’t think about me anymore, I do not exist to you anymore.” That kind of feeling.

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“Yet to be born, you’re already dead”
This line brings up the feeling that many transgender people feel that they have not truly gotten to live, or to “be born”, as they cannot express themselves as their gender, or are not biologically aligned with said gender, and the dysphoric feelings causing us to feel empty or dead inside, or suicidal.

“Yet to be born, you’re already dead” sounds like you could never live, even at the very moment you should (birth) : as if the society rejects you as a transsexual, and doesn’t “allow” you to be part of the society. As you’re rejected, you feel like not even living.

I think this has more to do with than just suicide. ‘Yet to be born, you’re already dead’ speaks very directly to my own experiences before transition. I didn’t really live before that. There was a general miasma that hung over my life, I prevented and stifled any sort of self – expression in case it seemed too feminine. I didn’t have friends because interacting with people as a guy felt WRONG. I feel like those first two lines reference that sort of living death, and self – suppression, which often leads to ‘cutting your veins wide open.’

Sex is determined in the womb, before one’s even born. For a male who will in their youth identify as female, it’s already over for them. Of course, surgery or hormone replacement theory or simply cross dressing can aid identification, but they will never be able to change their biology, never be wholly female.

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The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

The verses talk about the hopelessness of being trans. That trans women as seen as deceptive; that a trans woman can only expect “pity fucks”, and to end up dead and mutilated – “burned-out eyes, grotesque beauty”; “A bullet in the head and a bullet in the chest”; “A nail through the feet and a nail through the hands”.

Mussolini, Bin Laden, and Jesus, as people who were killed for what they believed, are metaphors for the violence against transgender people.

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Laura Jane Grace draws a comparison between Mussolini and Bin Laden. Both were fearful enemies of Western democracy in their day. Both were eventually hunted down and killed in a gory, undignified manner. “Esso” is brought in as an allusion to the oil industry: many people feel that access to Middle Eastern oil was the real reason for the “war on terror.”

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Unlike past releases that merely hinted at gender-based themes, [Transgender Dysphoria Blues] is direct, blatant, even… An anthem to the “this really fucking sucks” feeling that many trans people can directly relate to. An ode to being pissed off at your body’s self-betrayal."

The song’s “dysphoria” describes the dissonance between self-identifying as a woman, but being perceived as a man by society, and an effeminate one at that. Society doesn’t always smile upon those who buck traditional gender roles.

Dysphoria in this context means a disconnect. So for some it could mean the disconnect of self identity and being perceived incorrectly. However more commonly it means a disconnect within ones self. For example identifying one way, but perceiving yourself wrong (IE: in a mirror). many trans people experience both.